RingCentral announced a critical mass of new and upcoming AI enhancements to its platform concentrated primarily on contact center capabilities but also blending in sales support and team collaboration. Although these features provide organizations with valuable insight across their business operations, they are largely already reflected in the portfolios from the likes of Cisco, Zoom, and 8×8, says GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.
Gregg Willsky, Principal Analyst, Enterprise Technology & Services at GlobalData, comments: “Consistently enhancing its platform has kept RingCentral among the ranks of top competitors in the unified communications and collaboration space. However, the company tends to be a follower rather than a leader. If RingCentral can get out of the gate faster going forward, it will further strengthen its market position.”
Taken collectively, the new features should benefit organizations by enabling them to optimize their operations. The contact center capabilities that RingCentral announced will go a long way toward making agents and supervisors much more effective in their roles. New team collaboration features are very relevant despite return-to-office mandates; the need remains to interact with colleagues in other locations as well as with customers, suppliers, partners and other external parties. A feature introduced in AIR, an autonomous AI agent, captures and updates sales leads in select CRM systems meaning businesses can maximize revenue.
Willsky continues: “RingCentral continues to improve the breadth and quality of its platform across team collaboration, contact center, and sales support.”
RingCentral needs to investigate expanding its arsenal of sales support tools. The wealth of information gathered on customers and their interactions with an organization through currently available contact center capabilities, combined with the ability of AI to mine and analyze that information, makes tools that generate sales leads and manage the funnel a natural progression.
Willsky concludes: “The introduction of the sales lead generation tool in AIR provides RingCentral an opportunity to expand beyond the team collaboration and contact center spaces and make a mark within the realm of sales support. This is an area that competitors have largely not yet explored, meaning that RingCentral could gain a first-mover advantage.”
